Bits and Bobs!

J'approche d'une petite ville, elle
est située à mi-côte. Une rivière
baigne ses murs et coule ensuite
dans un jour si favorable
que je compte ses tours et ses
clochers. Elle me paraîte peinte
sur le penchant de la colline.

LA BRUYERE
Voyage de Clermont à Thiers

Wee poem to start you off, there, about the (train, I assume) journey from Clermont to Thiers.

You haven't heard from me in a while because I've been 'busy' and am currently struggling to recover from a 2 day hangover. It was my 21st, what can I say? 1) I'm getting old. 2) I could have been worse haha. 3) We had a funny, funny night on Tuesday, so that's ok!

This week, I haven't had all of my classes as my pupils have been doing their BAC blancs - mock exams for their Baccalauréat. Poor things. Hate exams! And last week was quite eventless in terms of teaching. Have had a few really good weeks with BTS, though, which is good. Even got a bit of banter going with some of the second years (Crédit Agricooool). Bon.

Before Christmas, I gave a lengthy summary of my first few months here. Voilà a shorter and probably much more positive one (apart from Thiers :p):

Clermont-Ferrand
I don't mind Poomont, now. I think the week and a half of sunshine definitely helped. And getting out to Paris and Lyon lol. I am fully aware that it's shit compared to most of the rest of France for reason upon reason, however I really aime the rugby team (ASM) and do now have a bit of a soft spot for le Puy-de-Dôme, our biggest volcano. You 'eard. I've become a bit attached to a volcano. Evidently, France has driven me completely insane. I was also told by a teacher about a month ago 'tu es complètement intégrée maintenant' when I wore my ASM hoody to work. That was nice to hear :) not such an outsider anymore (after 5 months...).

Thiers
Bloody Thiers haha! Being here, it still feels a lot like how I'd imagine Soviet Russia would've felt. This part will, sadly, never change and I ask God and my friends 'Why? Why me? Why was I chosen out of hundreds of French students to be placed in Thiers?' every day I come to work. Just because I like this volcano, doesn't mean I aime the mountains/countryside as well, now! Well, maybe a little bit more :p Things I like about Thiers are (that's right, I just typed 'like' and 'Thiers' in the same sentence): The place has made me a more tolerant person!! I know this, because you have to have the patience of a SAINT in general to spend lots of time in a place like this and also because, on the train back from Lyon, Sam started getting wound up quickly by the trees and fields and fields and fields and ooh, mountains, fields, fields, a shack, fields, treeeeees, trees, TREEEEES etc. etc. (I did try to warn you all) as we entered the Auvergne and I was calm as can be. Kinda like hey, look at me, I can handle this greenery that's all up in ma grill. I also recognised Thiers from the other side of the mountain. It's freaking me out how I recognise different fields and tree 'families' and sky lines etc. Thiers has also made me appreciate Clermont and the rest of the world, more.

The Peopolz
Ok, so, you know how when I first got to Thiers, the teachers (none of whom live anywhere near, obviously) told me that everyone in Thiers is very poor and that's why there's no shops, no work, no nothinnng etc.? And then how I found out that a teacher at Erin's lycée had taken her on a walk and pointed out how nice the BACKs of the houses are, how nice their gardens are, how many swimming pools can be seen...? Me and Erin discussed this at the beginning of our placement and remarked on how bizarre it was that the vast majority of people living in Thiers seem to be trying to hide their wealth. Before Christmas, I couldn't be bothered to lesson plan (casual) so I discussed stereotypes with some of my students, and it emerged with some of them that Auvergnats (in general, so people from the Clermont-Ferrand/Vichy/Moulins areas) are known for being stereotypically tight with their money and their possesions. One guy gave the brilliantly-worded example 'If I have cake and you say me I can have a part of cake I say NO you can't have some of my cake'. Obviously, after each example, I was told 'but not me, not me, me and my family aren't like that'. Hmm, we thought. Could this be part of the reason for the Thiernois wanting to hide their wealth? Are they a bit paranoid about something related? The most recent piece to this puzzle surfaced in a class I had last week. I gave them role play scenarios which they worked on in groups of 2 or 3 (so there were several groups) and the first scenario was around the subject of bullying. Fascinatingly, the victim in every group's scenario was being bullied because they had a lot of money. Weeeiiiirrrddd, huh? Erin and I are still trying to figure out what all of this MEANS haha but there you are. There's my little social study of Thiers.

The Good Times
Well, Tuesday night was definitely a highlight! I won't even go into what/how much alcohol I consumed, but you should know that I am an absolute hero. Shout out to Victor the barman who also loved his life that night and made me a birthday cracker with some cream that ended up, through no fault of my own, in my hair and face. What a guy. Here we are:



Here is Beardmore's toilet maze from a different night:



From left to right: Pauline (the best Frenchie everrr), Lauryn and Rachael/Deji (my favourite female Scot):



Jemima (Mike), Laura (Bran/Wales), Dan (... Dan/Beiber) and Lauryn in Jaude this Christmas:



Halloween:



Some random pricks who ruined my hair and, consequently, my life:



Only joking, love you boys! (... Sometimes).

Tomorrow I return to Angleterre for 2 weeks! Reeeeeally looking forward to seeing most of the fam and 2 of my best mates in the evening for a meal! In the same restaurant in Stanmore that my Marge went to for her 21st - aaawwww isn't that nice? :) And I'm afraid (no, really, I'm genuinely actually a little bit scared) of the inevitable battering my liver is going to recieve again on Saturday night! Suppose I'd better get it over and done with haha!

Love to all and will see many of you this weekend! xxxx

Culture and sheep killing.

Herro, here's the latest:

Last week was the funniest week I've had since beginning teaching! Monday was BRILLIANT as il n'y avait pas de secondes! Excellent! So I didn't have my first lesson at 8am or my last one at 3pm! Still had to come in quite early because of trains, but only taught from 11am-1pm. Bliss. And it was sunny! Got back to Clermont Shore really early so went on bank and laundrette dates with Mike and Wales.

Tuesday was a similar affair: first year BTS (the pooheads) are on stage for 2 weeks, so I finished at 12pm. Did lots of 'have you ever/would you ever..?' and advertising exercises with the other classes, which went down well. I finally cracked the boring know-it-all class. Scoooore. Hopefully I will remain in their good books! Also that class cracked me up this morning (would never have seen that coming). I asked the annoying swearing boys very nicely, before they started, if they could (for once) not use any bad words in their dialogue. "Ahhh ptaiiiiin". So that was their entire dialogue down the drain, then. But they coped! And they didn't try to push their luck either, so this made me a bit more willing to compromise. I just thought, if it makes them THAT happy so say 'fuck you', 'mother fucker', 'prick' (quite impressed they know little ones like that, actually) and 'wanker', and no one else is around to hear... Ahhhh why notttt? Don't be tight, Murdoch! "Boys, this time you may use one swear word. Once. If you absolutely must. Use it wisely..." This made them incredulously happy and now they smile at me rather than giving me evils. What made me laugh, though, was that all of the girls, who are very lady-like and polite and would never think to add in an unneccesary grand mot, took this as their cue to slip in "ahh FEUCK" somewhere irrelevant in their's as well haha. They were also really going for it! I really feel like they learnt something today.

On Wednesday, I literally rolled around in my pyjamas all day, generally just being happy with my day off. Yeah, thought I'd share that image with you. Deji came over in the evening for some romantic vegetarian burritos. If you and I are connected on Spotify, check out my playlist entitled 'Dej <3'.

Thursday was entertaining, as usual. Had the lovely class of dreams at 8am and we decided to sod the lesson half way through to talk about different English/French accents and French TV. I have a nifty list. 'Plus belle la vie' sounds like a mixture between 'Eastenders' and 'Desperate Housewives', so il faut que je get on that. Ahhhww and they invited me for coffee in the student foyer. Dey so naize :)

My second lesson was just ridiculous! There were only 4 girls and Fayssal : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUgg4wd1ke4. If you've just watched that video then, err, yeah...

Have you ever/Would you ever..?

"Would you ever steal?" "Yez, I would steal the eyes of Lauryn *creepy stare*". Nervous laughter from me and the girls. I'm thinking that, to be fair to the guy, even though it was cringe it was really quick, so I'll give him that one. "Genius, aaaaanyway..." More laughter from the girls. "Mais NON je suis sérieux, quoi." Sulk. Riiiiiiiight. At least he grasped the use of the word 'would'. Moving swiftly on. "So, has anyone ever-" "Lauryn! Lauryn! I forget something!" (Oh Jesus) "Yes?" "Does you 'ave a cléf?" He asks, brandishing his USB stick. "... No... Why?" "Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh......... I 'as a film for you. Iz called 'The Prophet'". Don't even want to know what that's all about, franchement. Carrying on. "What's the silliest thing you have ever done?" Blank faces (not a lot goes down in Thiers). "Oh! Oh! OH!" "Yes, Fays?" "I killed a sheep in Algeria!!". Bloody fantastic. He then proceeded to stand up and demonstrate, very graphically and with sound effects, exactly how he had kicked this 'medium', 'shit' sheep to death (when he was 11... The actual fuck?) and how his uncle had gone mental and slapped him. He ended this spectacle by revealing "I don't like this sheeps, quoi" with a big frown on his face. Bit worrying. After that, every 5 minutes until the end of the class he would start going "MEEEEHHHRRRR" and mime his sheep slaughter with a slightly manical grin on his face.

I have to say, from a teaching perspective, I was thrown.

Before the last lesson, I found a note from this English teacher saying 'Lauryn you have whole class today as normally I am not there'. Okay 1) What are you talking about, woman? and 2) No, because every other week I have a different class all together, so how does that one work? To be fair, her English is about as good as my French and if I ever see her, she just speaks English. I never understand that the feck this woman's chat is. JustdoitinFrench! The pupils turned out to be half brilliant and half little... Anyway but it went well!

On Friday we went for coffee and then a small group of us, English and French, went to Le Court Métrange, the international short film festival in Clermont-Ferrand. Didn't think I was that into films, but it was really good! We did four solid hours (truely heroic), 2 hours of the French nationals and 2 hours of the internationals. I'm now so cultured I want to cry.

Yesterday morning (Montag) I was bloody late for bloody school bloody again! Second time in like 5 weeks. Naat goooood. Not my fault! This teacher never showed up but the MAIN thing is I'm not in trouble lol pheeew. I think what I have going for me is that it would be impossible for me to have an attendance record worse than the Spanish assistant. Thank you, Spanish assistant.

Did a lesson with this first class yesterday where I gave them scenarios to do with bullying, stealing etc. and they had to create role plays to show what they would do in these situations. I found it interesting that in each bullying role play, the victim was being picked on for having lots of money. I guess this further explains why the rich people in Thiers (so basically all the people in Thiers) leave the fronts of their houses looking scabby and old. Or maybe their making a big deal of hiding their wealth has fuelled this attitude? Who knows? I feel like I have discovered another piece to mine and Erin's puzzle, we just can't work out where it fits! They're mostly all quite strange people in Thiers anyway. Who will ever know why they do what they do?

Also did one with 2nd year BTS today (have to keep things simple as with the pupils in their 20s haha ahh bless their lives!) and the boys gave a dramatic account of me being 'encircled' (how/why they know the word 'encircled' yet couldn't tell you they went shopping or to the park in English is beyond me) outside the school and them STOPPING THE BUS haha and scaring away the bullies and me crying but then 'no cry after because of we'! I had wondered why they'd been so insistant on being the last to share their work! I really like that whole class, actually. I was scared before I started teaching them because every single one is older than me! I thought I'd have some trouble with this one girl who was being a dick in the first lesson but I tried the old being overly nice to her about her and her rubbish English in the first lesson and I think she realised quite quickly that I'm not a douche so now I'd say in her group she probably tries the hardest!

In other news...

The sun has gone, owww :( It's raining in Poomont-Ferrand and Thiers is stuck in a cloud once more! But I'm glad we had that nice, sunny week as we desperately needed it! AND today I get to leave early again yissss :D AND it's 8 days until my birthday yissss :D AND it's 10 days until the Second Coming (back) of the Murdoch yissss :D AND I might be shopping in Lyon with Wales tomorrow yisssss :D ..... Yiiiissssss!!!

Paris, Lyon, more Clermont & I have now, officially, seen all of Mike's lady parts :( all of them! 28/01/11 - 07/02/11

Hiya! I've been enjoying life lots since I last posted! Let us begin with Pariiiiiiis! Not a massive fan, personally, and didn't have time to do much touristing BUT Vicky and I did spend over NINE HOURS in Disneyland! Again, not really a Disney person (clearly I have no interests?), but I have to say it was up there in the top 7 best days of my life!! Thank you again, Anne! Ooh, Anne...

We stayed in a 'hotel' in Montmartre and definitely made a friend for life in the form of the hotelier..... Naaat! As for the hotel room... I'll just tell you that we paid 50 squids each for a 2 night stay in central Paris and leave the rest to your imagination... And I still can't honestly say that I've been out in Paris as Vicky, Sam, Katie and I just ended up drinking and talking for the whole of Europe in our room on Friday night, if I'm honest. And on Saturday, Vicky and I met Satie/Kam (Sam and Katie? Could one of these possibly catch on??) in a strange place called Paramentiers (could well have just invented that name) to wish Kyle a happy birthday. But, sadly, Vauryn (Vicky and Lauryn) had to collect their zimmer frames from reception and shuffle home shortly after midnight. Eeheheheh...

For a more detailed/slightly more dramatic account of that weekend, read Satie's blogs cos I literally can't be arsed. Soz babz.

I can't really remember what happened last week, just that I was next-level tired after all the excitement of Disneyland on Saturday. Such a child. OH YEAH I attempted to eat an egg on a crepe at Pauline's for CREPE DAY (La Chandaleur) on Tuesday night and I managed to avoid getting egg poisoning again (sneeeeeeaky French eggs) because I am a hero. Crepe day was actually Wednesday, but that day Pauline getted off to sunny Glasgow to 'visit some friends' - suuuuuuuure ;) *cough*!

Thursday night was odd. Dej, Lauryn, Welshie and Welshie no. 2 decided to make celebrity guest appearances at 'Afterwork' which is an event which occurs in your life once a month at the Coop. de Mai (music venue in Clermont) on a Thursday from 6pm-midnight (yeah, seriously). People that go there favour standing in small groups, chatting, over dancing. This made me both sad in side and very confused. There's bare space, tall ceiling, a decent music level in your ear holes and friends... Why would you not be busting some movez girlfriend *click*?? It got pretty emotional.

And, I can safely say, me and Dej got PICKED UP. By a girl. Yay. Welcome, ladies, to Clermont-Ferrand, where all the fitties are either gay, taken or menstruate. Not the one. Her name was Meryl and she was a nutter. The Welshies went home to get a good night's sleep in preparation for being angry about the game the following night (Laura, give me love give me nothing but love) and Dej and I got a lift to Meryl's place which is like 5 mins from my place. Win. She basically got naked (Meryl, not Dej, don't panic) and her weird mate was there then 2 guys who they didn't know and who didn't actually know each other, incidently, just appeared out of nowhere and cotched with us for a bit then we went to a 'club' around the corner that we'd never seen before. And that was Thursday night.

On Friday evening we watched England v. Wales in a wee pub in Place de la Victoire next to the Cathedral. The French were yelling 'COME ON WALLS' which was silly. Where the f**k is Walls?? Beats me...

Saturday was Lyon day! Yaaaaay! Lyon was classsss :D And if the weather had been a guy, I'd probably have fancied it. I met Sam (of the famous Satie duo) at Lyon Part-Dieu and we spent four glorious hours soaking up its sexyness, its NICE, POLITE PEOPLE, its ENGLISH SHOP (I'm gonna take this opportunity to proudly inform you that, of all the British football teams, Arsenal was this shop's flag of choice. Don't even bother trying to argue that Arsenal's a French team cos that will not stop Lauryn and Lyon being best friends) and enjoying the weather. It. Was. Lush. I didn't wanna leave! Definitely spending a weekend there soon, even if I have to ride it solo like my mate Derulo. It comes a close second after Landan, for me, so far! Even without the nice weather, I think I would have fallen in love!

Saturday night was wellllllll funny! :) I brought Sam back to Clermont, determined that she wouldn't regret it, met up with QM's NEW ARRIVAL Dan (how exciting!) and we went to the Ladpad for a chilled out house-warming........ Only joking! People were ill, a cupboard fell off the wall (but, as Beardmore pointed out, it looks better without that cupboard anyway), Mike was NETWORKING/flashing and the whole thing demonstrated, beautifully, why the guys never bothered to furnish the place. Funny, funny night!

Sunday was lovely, too! Weather-wise and life-wise! Sam and I were out and about in the sunshine by precisely 12.08pm after THAT NIGHT. Ghandi and Mandela, powering through life. I wasn't lying to her when I said that you can see all of Clermont (may or may not have forgotten about Jardin Lecoq...) in around half an hour, so we had ages to chill before her train back to Paris.

After we said our farewells on the platform, I met Wales and then we retrieved Mike. Together, we spent the afternoon cotchin in the sun in Jardin Lecoq (again, sorry Sam. I'll nick someone else's pictures and we'll just pretend you saw it) and watched 'The King's Speech' with Deji and some Erasmuseses at the cinema in the evening. Lavly!!